By James Okoth
Kisumu is staring at a Sh5.9 billion question: how did a county with billions in public resources end up carrying such a mountain of unpaid bills, and who will finally fix the system that keeps creating them?
The figure, recorded as at June 30, 2025, represents a painful reality for ordinary people.
Behind every unpaid contractor is a business struggling to survive. Behind every delayed supplier payment are employees, families, creditors and dependants waiting for their livelihoods to stabilise.
And behind every stalled project is a resident waiting for a road, water connection, health facility or other public service.
Although Kisumu has reported progress in reducing the pending-bills burden, the problem remains a major test of financial management and oversight.
This is where the 2027 Senate contest acquires a much bigger meaning.
The question is no longer simply who will occupy the Senate seat.
It is who has the competence, independence and institutional understanding to protect Kisumu’s money and make devolution work for its people.
A Senator for the people
Dr. Richard Ayah is emerging with a proposition built around accountability, evidence and service delivery.
His argument is that Kisumu does not merely require a louder political voice in Nairobi.
It requires a Senator capable of asking difficult questions about public expenditure and following those questions until answers are produced.
Why are contractors going unpaid?
Why do pending bills accumulate?
Why does recurrent expenditure continue to compete aggressively with development?
Why do residents continue to experience water shortages and inadequate sanitation?
Why do health facilities struggle despite substantial public investment?
These questions directly touch the lives of ordinary Kisumu residents.
And they are questions that fall squarely within the Senate’s constitutional responsibility to protect county interests and oversee nationally allocated resources.
Why Ayah’s professional record matters
Ayah enters the political arena with a professional profile that is markedly different from the conventional political career.
He is a medical doctor and public-health specialist with an MBChB, MSc and PhD, and has built a career around health systems, health policy, service delivery and implementation science.
His University of Nairobi profile records his work in health-services management, evaluation of health services, communicable and non-communicable diseases and the implementation of health policy.
He has also undertaken research on hospital governance, health-service delivery and the systems required to improve healthcare outcomes.
His academic work has included research into how governance structures affect maternal healthcare delivery and how health systems can respond to equipment needs.
That experience gives his political proposition a practical foundation.
From health systems to county systems
Ayah’s leadership experience extends beyond the classroom.
He is Board Chair of the Centre for Health Solutions–Kenya, an organisation that has managed a large portfolio of health programmes and places emphasis on internal controls, evidence-informed interventions and programme implementation.
That experience is particularly relevant to Kisumu.
The county’s problems are not simply about money.
They are about systems.
“Money must be planned properly, spent properly, monitored properly and translated into services that people can see and feel,” says Dr. Ayah.
That is the governance philosophy Ayah would bring to the Senate contest.
The pending-bills test
For Ayah, the pending-bills crisis presents an opportunity to redefine what Senate oversight should mean.
The Senate should not wait for financial problems to become political scandals.
It should demand early disclosure, verification of genuine obligations, credible settlement plans and stronger controls to prevent the accumulation of fresh debts.
The objective should be simple:
Pay what is genuinely owed, protect local businesses and stop the cycle from returning.
A wider Kisumu agenda
The same philosophy can be applied to health, water, sanitation, agriculture, fisheries and urban infrastructure.
Kisumu’s water and sanitation challenges are not merely infrastructure problems; they are public-health and economic issues.
Research involving Ayah has specifically examined water, sanitation and health risks in informal settlements in Kisumu.
That gives his professional record an unusually direct connection to some of the county’s everyday challenges.
For fishing communities around Lake Victoria, farmers in irrigation schemes and residents of Kisumu’s rapidly expanding urban settlements, the expectation is ultimately the same:
Public resources must produce public value.
The Senate race takes shape
Ayah’s emergence adds a new dimension to a race that is already expected to attract several political heavyweights.
Among the names being discussed in the wider Kisumu political arena are Stephen Nyandiare, Samuel Odoro and Willis Raburu, among others, although the field remains fluid ahead of the 2027 elections.
For Ayah, however, the contest is increasingly being framed around a different question.
Not simply who can win the seat.
But who can give the people of Kisumu a Senate that watches the money, challenges failure and turns devolution into something citizens can actually feel.
And that is where his professional experience in public health, research, governance, institutional leadership and systems thinking becomes the central pillar of his political proposition.
Kisumu’s Senate question is ultimately a people’s question: who will stand between public money and public waste?
